An Interview: with a Champion Skier

John Bower enjoyed a good measure of success during his seven years of international ski competition. He was a member of the 1964 and 1968 United States Olympic teams. But in 1968, Mr. Bower learned something in Christian Science that helped him become the first American and non-European ever to win the King's Cup in the Holmenkollen Combined ski event held each year in Oslo, Norway. Now he coaches the United States Nordic Combined Team, and is ski coach at Middlebury College, Vermont. In summer, Mr. Bower directs a camp for young Christian Scientists in Maine.

The Holmenkollen win didn't come until the final competition of your career. Can you explain?

It had been generally recognized from my first year in international competition that I had the ability to make it to the top. However, "the top" kept avoiding me.

At Holmenkollen, I finally found out why. Mrs. Eddy says, "Right motives give pinions to thought, and strength and freedom to speech and action." ^{Science and Health, p. 454;} Thanks to the help of an experienced Christian Scientist, I saw that my motive had not been entirely pure. I had been working for a high placing rather than just to express God. I was trying to use God-given qualities to beat other people. It didn't work. I was shown that I was not engaged in a mini-war with the other athletes, but that I should strive to love them and see them all as expressing Love's abundant supply of qualities. One individual's expression of God could in no way deprive another of any good. When I finally understood this, I experienced a freedom, relaxation, control, and poise I had never felt before.

Then all I had to do was to stay alert every time the suggestion came: "You've got to jump so far to get so many points to beat so-and-so." I denied it. That was not what I was trying to do.

I became naturally more friendly with the other competitors. I was free and happy, so much so that people commented afterward, "Don't you have any nerves?"

What do you think about when you're racing over the countryside?

A cross-country race takes about an hour, and you have a long time to think. [The Holmenkollen cross-country course is 15 km.] I found that I ran my best races when I could hold to the truth all the time I was out there. Do you know Hymn No. 136?

I try to think of all the qualities of Spirit I reflect—strength, energy, spontaneity, inspiration, power. If you've ever run a race yourself, well, you know, it's one aggressive suggestion after another!

What do they sound like?

You start out and the first suggestion you'll get is, "You're not going fast enough."

How do you deal with that one?

You know that God is infinite; He fills all space. So man, His reflection, is always in his right place functioning perfectly. Christ Jesus set the world's speed record when the boat that carried him on the Sea of Galilee was immediately at the other side!

Next, you come to an uphill and that's when the first suggestions of fatigue hit. It's a depressing, tiring feeling. Supposedly your muscles are not thoroughly warmed up. That's the suggestion you have to hit the hardest. I hold to the definition of Mind in Science and Health,where Mrs. Eddy writes, "The exterminator of error is the great truth that God, good, is the only Mind, and that the supposititious opposite of infinite Mind—called devil or evil—is not Mind, is not Truth, but error, without intelligence or reality." ^{Science and Health, p. 469;}

I see that my qualities and abilities come from Mind and that a mortal body has no power to tell me any lies about myself.

What next?

Perhaps the suggestion comes that your wax—which is crucial in cross-country skiing—is not working as well as it should. Such nagging suggestions can be silenced by knowing that God alone governs your experience and that the expression of your Godlike qualities is not dependent on matter. There is no law of mortal mind that can interfere with the operation of God's qualities.

By then, usually if you've got all those taken care of, you're going well and begin to pass other racers. Then, you have to watch out that you don't catch yourself thinking, "Well, gee, I'm doing pretty well!" It helps to get rid of this suggestion of personal sense when you know, "I can of mine own self do nothing," ^{John 5:30;} but "with God all things are possible," ^{Mark 10:27;} and "unto him be glory." ^{Eph. 3:21;} If you start patting yourself on the back, usually something happens. In my early years I occasionally crossed my skis when I was going around a corner at the end of a race, thus losing time.

And then the finish line comes up. If you're first, there's gratitude. If you haven't skied as well as you should have, it's sometimes hard to cope with your feelings, particularly after all that prayerful metaphysical work! However, if you haven't performed well there is always a reason for it—and you had better find it fast. I've handled discouragement with Mrs. Eddy's hymn "O gentle presence" a thousand times I'm sure, especially the thought that "loss is gain." ^{Poems, p. 4;} I have declared that I have the necessary discernment to learn what the lesson in my loss is and that it can't be kept from me.

Let's talk about jumping for a minute. I've watched this event on television—the camera zooming in on the skier's tense face before he jumps . . .

One of the major beliefs to be overcome in ski jumping is fear, because there is a significant element of danger in jumping, particularly under windy or icy conditions. To complicate this, I had a fear of heights, which Christian Science helped me overcome. When I was a kid, I couldn't get five feet off the ground without a terrific struggle with fear. I don't know how many times I've said before shoving off, "God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind." ^{II Tim. 1:7.} That brings in love, the remedy for fear. And God, Love, is everywhere.

On the Holmenkollen jump, the takeoff speed is forty-five or fifty miles an hour. Everything happens very quickly. There's not much time to think. Between jumps I usually did prayerful work to relax myself. I would realize that I was in the atmosphere of divine Love, and that there was no room for any outside force to interfere with my jumping, to affect my timing or concentration or form. A jumper's distance comes through his speed and perfection in aerodynamic curvature. You have to be "prayed up" before you shove off and receptive to the right human footsteps to get your body in position.

After winning the cross-country at Holmenkollen, you had a day of training before the jump.

I used this day to get over the mental disarray produced by the first day's victory. When you win an international event, there's a lot of commotion—press conferences, people wanting to get your reactions, and the like. If thought is not kept clear, this can sow the seed again for wrong motives and throw you off guard. So I prayed about each suggestion—desire to win, fear of crumbling under pressure.

How did you handle the belief of pressure?

I worked with the chapter "Animal Magnetism Unmasked" in Science and Health. That's where Mrs. Eddy shows how evil claims to operate in human thinking, and how it can be defeated. I tried to see that the pressure which was trying to attach itself to me was not actually coming from persons and could not touch people; it was error, and could not be any part of God's man. No evil could interfere with my individual expression of good qualities so long as I did not interject false human motives into the picture.

Skiing has been a family sport with us. I started skiing when I was fourteen months old. I wasn't forced into it; it was something I enjoyed. I am indebted to my loving parents, who, from the first day I started to race, showed me how to give myself a Christian Science treatment for the problems that come up in competition. They showed me how to apply what is true of God and man. I was taught that as I did this consistently, my results would naturally be better.

In skiing, I learned to use Christian Science. This gave me a natural starting point to apply it in school—to social life and studies. By the time I got to high school and college, where the real challenges are presented, I had no doubts about Christian Science. I knew it worked. I'd proved it in skiing. And I'd had to do it for myself. It wasn't something that had been done for me.